1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates generally to reducing latency and improving energy efficiency in Passive Optical Network (PON) systems.
2. Background Art
Existing Passive Optical Network (PON) systems employ a periodic polling reporting scheme in which GATE messages are constantly transmitted by the Optical Line Terminal (OLT) in the downstream and corresponding REPORT messages are constantly transmitted in the upstream by the subtending Optical Network Units (ONUs) even by ONUs which have no upstream data traffic (idle ONUs). While the downstream/upstream transmission times of GATE/REPORT messages are relatively short, the transmissions can still consume a considerable amount of bandwidth and power, particularly when multiple ONUs are present.
The present disclosure will be described with reference to the accompanying drawings. Generally, the drawing in which an element first appears is typically indicated by the leftmost digit(s) in the corresponding reference number.